In which she learns that taking photos of lighting is rather difficult

Wow it's been quite awhile since my last blog post. Most of my spare energy has been directed towards organising my next print run of fabric, which will hopefully be finished by the end of next week or the week after - my printer is really busy at the moment, which is a shame.

I've also been trying to come up with some new pattern designs but haven't been happy with the result. Maybe I've subconciously moved the bar up too high due to recent successes. I want my next pair of printed fabric designs to be just perfect. The right mix of unique + fun + nature-ee + modern + retro-ee :)

A few people have asked me recently if it's okay for them to use my fabric to make things which they then on-sell. My answer is simple - definately! In my mind that's the ideal use for it. I'd love to see my fabric made into real things that can then be sold on to happy customers. I'd make things with it myself if I had a more reliable sewing machine. That said, the first thing I did when I received my fabric was make it into some lampshades. The yellow works particuarly well as a lampshade because the colour isn't too strong and provides just the right amount of contrast when the lamp is on:





Take care and thanks again for all the support and very lovely comments!

More than I bargained for

After a long, busy day of cutting and packaging yesterday I was pleased to discover an extra metre of each fabric still on the roll! So for anyone who missed out last time there's another 2 quantities of each fabric in my etsy shop :)

But wait, there's more

Golly gee. I put my fabric up for sale last night and woke up this morning to find it all gone! That's one of the fun things about living in Australia - things happen overnight and you find out bleary eyed in the morning.

To those who bought some - thankyou ,thankyou, thankyou. It's all rather overwheming at the moment but also such a relief that things have turned out so well - I could have been left here with bolts of fabric lying around the living room. Thankfully not so.

AND, to those who missed out, there's more to come!! I'm about to get another batch printed which should be done mid next week. I think a third colourway is in order - willing to take suggestions!

I'd better run. So much to do. Thank you all so much again for all the support, and for all the lovely comments.

Finally!!!!

My fabric is finally here! I ran to the printers last night to collect it just as they were closing. I couldn't sleep properly for thoughts of fabric, fabric, fabric. Seriously. Anyway, here are the 4 designs, and they're up in my Etsy shop. Whew!


'Flowing Dots' in lemonlime


'Flowing Dots' in hazy blue


'Riverstones' in lemonlime


'Riverstones' in hazy blue

And so the nervous waiting begins. Please, if you have any feedback or advice please get in touch, I won't take offense :)

New Moo

My new set of Moo cards arrived this week! I still think Moo cards are the best thing since sliced bread. 100 cards with up to 100 different designs on the back all for only $25 USD sent anywhere in the world. You can't go wrong.



My justification for getting a new batch printed was that my old ones said "interactive and graphic designer" which is too limiting these days so these ones just say "designer". Ooh how fancy.

I got an email from Nicole today suggesting that Craftree would make a good print. I hadn't even thought about it, but I think it's a nice idea. My local giclee printer can run off A3 canvas prints basically on demand, so I decided to put a few A3 options up on Etsy. here's just a couple:



I put some of my girls up A3 size also, just to see how they go.


Ooh and have you seen Etsy Mini? It's an Etsy widget that creates little thumbnails of your shop items that you can put on your blog. I've got one on the right hand side of my blog. Very handy.

The Final Four

I haven't mentioned anything for a couple of weeks but the fabric printing is going ahead as we speak! It's due to be finished early next week and I am _so_ excited. And nervous. But mainly excited. Below are the four pattern and colourway options that will be available. The bottom design was a big favourite in the poll a few weeks ago, however the top one got hardly any votes at all (i reckon you have to see it printed to get the full effect). But it was the lovely Jenny from Amitie Textiles that helped pursuade me on that one, saying it was her favourite and offering to buy 10m of it for her shop. Yay!


(each square represents about 22cm squared)

Also i'd like to send a BIG thankyou to Krisen Doran who's been such a great help along the way, giving me heaps of advice on the process and being a great sounding board :)

Autumn

The weather is slowly starting to turn cold over here. I'm trying to fend off memories of cold hands and cold feet and tense shivering with thoughts of electric blankets and scarves and gloves and finding the perfect coat and possibly splashing out on some Camper boots. God by the way I'm talking you'd think the weather actually got "cold" over here but really it never drops below zero. I'm just a cold frog.

A new pattern in theme with Autumn:


And some more of that high contrast 'stylish' stuff. I can't really think of a practical purpose for this one however. Maybe wrapping paper?


"Craftree" hehe.

Wilkins & Kent

Here is where I indulge in some gratuitous showing-off of a new piece of 'designer' furniture in our apartment. In fact it's our first & only piece of designer furniture, and our first proper joint purchase:





We made the mistake of walking into Wilkins & Kent whilst looking for a coffee table and both fell for it instantly. The Wilkins & Kent boys make such beautiful furniture and their whole store on Brunswick Street is full of wonderful things.

This morning I was joking around making the pattern below, titled "I Can Be A Stylist Too". It's supposed to be in mock of current design trends (I'm not really a 'stylist' kind of designer), but I showed it to Pete who said "hey, that actually looks cool". So it stays :)

Thankyouse

Firstly, I just want to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of feedback on the pattern decision. And it was definately overwhelming! I spent so long struggling and stressing over which patterns to print and it kept me awake with racing thoughts for a couple of nights. But I've finally made my decision and am just waiting (somewhat frustratedly) on the fabric. I am SO itching to get moving on this!!

Meanwhile I got the coolest package in the mail today. This is Nicole upholding her part of the patterns-for-handmade-book bargain, and my god did she uphold it. I had a giggly old time unwrapping each part of the package she put together for me. Soooo gorgeous, every bit of it. And check out that wrapping paper!


In the forgeound is the beautiful handmade book she made me. It features different patterned papers front and back, fabric lining, a velcro buttoned pocket at the front containing a Certificate of Authenticity (with a familiar pattern on it, hehe), and pages and pages of different found papers waiting to be drawn all over.


Thanks again, Nicole :)